Generally, financial automated apparatuses such as CDUs (Cash Dispenser Units) or BRMs (Bill Recycling Machines) have been developed to rapidly and conveniently provide the majority of financial services other than a face-to-face service in an unmanned manner regardless of the time. Such financial automated apparatuses are typically referred to as ATMs (Automated Teller Machine).
ATMS are imparted with functions for providing a variety of financial services as well as a cash deposit/withdrawal function. For this, ATMs may include different kinds of additional units, such as a card processing unit, a bankbook processing unit, and a check deposit unit.
In the case of cash, depending on the face value, the sizes and shapes of bills may vary, while bills of the same face value have generally the same size and shape. Thus, ATMs can accept a predetermined number of bills in a bundle. However, unlike bills, checks have a variety of characters printed thereon using a specific magnetic ink. A check acceptor reads characters, such as the serial number, printed on a check using a MICR (Magnetic Ink Character Reader) and then processes the deposit of the check.
The check acceptor generally includes an introduction unit which accepts a check, a check alignment unit which aligns the introduced check in a predetermined position, a transfer unit which transfers the aligned check, an MICR unit which reads information on the check, a printing unit that prints a character string onto the rear surface of the check, and a storage unit which sequentially stacks and stores checks that have been subjected to a deposit process.
In the check acceptor configured as above, unlike the automated bill deposit/withdrawal function of the ATM that accepts a bundle of a predetermined number of bills using the introduction unit, checks should be oriented in a specific direction and introduced into the introduction unit one after another so that the checks can be transferred along a predetermined transfer path and stored in the storage unit. That is, a check must be introduced into the introduction unit in a preset orientation in order for a check transfer operation to be able to be carried out. Moreover, there are a limited number of checks that can be introduced.
Therefore, a lot of checks should be inserted into the check acceptor over several times, causing the check deposit transaction to be time-consuming, and inconveniencing the user.
Furthermore, although all checks may be the same size in a certain country, a personal check personally issued and a business check issued by a corporation may be generally different from each other in their sizes. Therefore, the check acceptor cannot process checks of different sizes.
In an effort to overcome the above problems, a bulk check acceptor was proposed in U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2010/0059586, published on Mar. 11, 2010, which is commonly assigned to the Applicant of the present invention and which is incorporated by reference herein in its entirety. This bulk check acceptor can accept checks in a bundle regardless of the size of the checks or an orientation in which the checks are input into the bulk check acceptor. Further, components are efficiently arranged, thus increasing convenience of use, and achieving a compact design.
However, a bill acceptor which can accept only bills in a bundle and a check acceptor which can accept only checks in a bundle are separately provided, thus inconveniencing users, and requiring a lot of installation space. Given purchase cost as well as the above disadvantageous factors, a combination of the bill acceptor and the check acceptor is strongly required.
Further, even though combined bills and checks having different sizes are introduced in bundle, the bundle needs to be dropped and deposited at a desired position in a storage cassette of the bill acceptor and the check acceptor, without incurring a jam.